Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 793.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: NINCH-ANNOUNCE <david@ninch.org> (189)
Subject: ARTSTOR Announced by Mellon Foundation
[2] From: NINCH-ANNOUNCE <david@ninch.org> (89)
Subject: "Digital Promise" project: $18 billion proposal
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 09:50:46 +0100
From: NINCH-ANNOUNCE <david@ninch.org>
Subject: ARTSTOR Announced by Mellon Foundation
NINCH ANNOUNCEMENT
News on Networking Cultural Heritage Resources
from across the Community
April 10, 2001
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Announces ArtSTOR
<http://www.mellon.org/artstor%20announcement.html>http://www.mellon.org/artstor%20announcement.html
[From the Mellon Foundation Website:]
April 5, 2001
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced today that it is undertaking a
significant new initiative by sponsoring the formation of "ArtSTOR," an
independent not-for-profit organization that will develop, "store," and
distribute electronically digital images and related scholarly materials
for the study of art, architecture, and other fields in the
humanities. The Foundation also announced that Neil L. Rudenstine will
lead an advisory group that is being established to guide the development
of the new entity and will chair its board when it is formally
established. James L. Shulman will serve as executive director of ArtSTOR.
ArtSTOR's mission will be to provide access to high quality digital images
and other relevant materials for teachers, students and scholars at
educational and cultural institutions. The new organization intends to
develop collections of these digital materials and related information that
will be broad and deep enough to meet a range of objectives. ArtSTOR also
aims to reduce costs for participating institutions by eliminating the need
for each entity or institution to create its own core archive. In
addition, ArtSTOR will address issues of sustainability. At present, it is
often difficult for scholars and institutions that develop valuable digital
archives to maintain them and make them available under appropriate
safeguards.
In negotiating the numerous legal and technical issues it will encounter as
it establishes digital collections of images and related materials, ArtSTOR
will benefit greatly from the leadership of Mr. Rudenstine, who will assume
the duties of chairman, on a half-time basis, after leaving the presidency
of Harvard on July 1 of this year.
Mr. Rudenstine will work with the Mellon Foundation's president, William G.
Bowen, and with Mr. Shulman to develop criteria for determining ArtSTOR's
content, the architecture of the database, policies governing intellectual
property rights, the method for distributing the content to users in the
educational and cultural worlds, and a business plan ensuring
sustainability of the project. ArtSTOR is in the process of applying for
status as an independent 501(c)(3) public charity; in the interim it is
being developed as a project of the Mellon Foundation.
"All of us at the Mellon Foundation are simply delighted that President
Rudenstine has agreed to make such a substantial commitment of his time and
talent to the development of the ArtSTOR concept," said Mr. Bowen. "Having
worked closely with Neil Rudenstine over more than 20 years at Princeton
and at the Mellon Foundation, I know what an extraordinarily insightful and
effective leader he is. I believe that his knowledge of the humanities and
of art history, his exceptional organizational skills, and his familiarity
with leading scholars in the field qualify him superbly to guide the
development of this new scholarly resource that has such potential to
enhance and even alter the study of art. He and James Shulman will make a
highly effective team, and I look forward with keen anticipation to working
with them."
In his own statement, Mr. Rudenstine stresses that: "The formation of
ArtSTOR represents a significant technological advance that will strengthen
our capacity to study the field of art and many neighboring fields. We all
recognize that there is no substitute for direct engagement with original
works of art or for actual archival study. But the special opportunities
presented by digital technologies constitute the most fundamental
development in the potential for increased access and flexibility of use
since the advent of photographic reproduction. Achieving ArtSTOR's
objectives will take considerable time and resources. It will also depend
critically upon the advice and collaboration of many individuals and
organizations whose experience and knowledge will be invaluable. The
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is uniquely suited, by its tradition and the
interests of its founders, to develop this new initiative. It also has, in
William Bowen, an outstanding president with whom I have worked as a close
colleague since the late 1960s, and in James Shulman, a person with the
executive leadership skills that ArtSTOR will need. I am very enthusiastic
about the prospect ahead."
One of ArtSTOR's first major projects will be the construction of an image
"gallery" that will facilitate the teaching of art history courses, both in
the US and abroad. It is anticipated that scholars and students with
access to the database via campus networks will be able to use its
high-quality images and carefully-documented resources to enrich teaching
and learning. The projected breadth of ArtSTOR's collection of digital
images is likely to make it useful not only for students and teachers of
art, but also for those studying history, anthropology, literature, the
classics, American studies, and other disciplines.
"We hope that ArtSTOR will make it easier to teach from images in all sorts
of classes, not only in art history," Shulman noted. "Moreover, while
there are very few ways in which technology-or any innovation-can change
the basic process of solitary scholarship in the humanities, I hope that
ArtSTOR can introduce some new possibilities. Neil's profound understanding
of both the work of the scholar and the workings of institutions will add
so much to our being able to realize ArtSTOR's potential."
In addition to creating a broadly conceived image gallery, ArtSTOR will
build and distribute electronically a number of deep scholarly collections,
including projects sponsored by Mellon as well as by others. For example,
in an initial pilot project, the Foundation has worked with the Dunhuang
Research Academy in China, scholars and visual resource experts from
Northwestern University, and a number of leading libraries and museums
worldwide to digitize images associated with Buddhist cave grottoes in
Dunhuang, China and now dispersed throughout the world.
In creating the "Mellon International Dunhuang Archive," the Foundation has
learned much about how technology can change the ways in which paintings,
manuscripts, sculpture, and other objects can best be recorded, accessed,
presented, and archived. One objective of the Dunhuang project is to
"re-connect," virtually, the cave paintings with numerous paintings,
manuscripts, and textiles once at Dunhuang but now dispersed in museums and
libraries all over the world. The Dunhuang project is an important
demonstration of one aspect of ArtSTOR's mission: to make accessible that
which is either difficult to access or (in many cases) entirely inaccessible.
A second pilot project is underway with the Museum of Modern Art in
conjunction with LUNA Imaging, Inc. based in Venice, California. The
digitization of over 6,000 works from the museum's design collection will
make these holdings available, for the first time and in unprecedented
ways, combining images of the highest resolution and appropriate text with
user interfaces and exceptionally flexible search mechanisms. Many of
these objects, which are of great interest to scholars, are locked away in
storage and thus not normally available for study.
The high quality of the Digital Design Collection of MoMA will characterize
other ArtSTOR collections, in part as the result of an agreement that the
Mellon Foundation has reached to make wide use of LUNA's Insight software
which will provide Internet access to collections through its advanced user
environment for research and teaching. In this and other ways, ArtSTOR
expects to build upon LUNA's accomplishments and the high standing that the
company enjoys within the academic and museum communities. Michael Ester,
president of LUNA Imaging, commented, "ArtSTOR should be able to ensure
that digital resources are available long-term for academic use while also
giving the owners of such materials confidence that their interests are
protected. It has extremely exciting potential as a safe haven repository
of cultural resources for research and education."
In working with content providers, the Foundation and ArtSTOR have obtained
perpetual, non-exclusive rights to aggregate such materials and distribute
them electronically for educational and scholarly purposes. (The
Foundation has retained the law firm of Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, PC to
help address complex intellectual property issues.) These agreements will
allow ArtSTOR to serve as a dependable repository for providing
non-commercial access to visual resources. In addition to serving the
needs of teachers and scholars, one goal of these projects is to support
the mission of institutions that seek to expand access to their own
holdings for academic audiences without incurring the financial and
administrative burdens of distribution.
The Mellon Foundation has long-standing interests in higher education, the
humanities, and the arts, and has made numerous grants in these fields. In
2000, the Foundation awarded grants totaling $220 million, with over 65
percent of these funds going to institutions of higher education or to
independent cultural institutions (including museums and research libraries).
In 1995, the Foundation formed JSTOR, an independent not-for-profit entity
whose mission is to create a trusted archive of important scholarly
journals and to extend access to that archive to as many scholars as
possible. JSTOR currently includes the entire runs of 147 journals, and
serves over 1,000 institutional subscribers in more than 40
countries. While the initial capital costs of digitizing the journals in
JSTOR's database have been supported by grants from Mellon, the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute, Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, and the Stavros S.
Niarchos Foundation, the current running costs of updating the database and
providing access to it are supported by fees paid by participating
institutions. The lessons learned through the development of JSTOR should
be of great value in establishing ArtSTOR. Also, the Foundation foresees a
number of possible points of intersection between JSTOR and ArtSTOR,
including potential linkages between art history journals and other
scholarly literature and digitized images in the ArtSTOR database.
A scholar of Renaissance literature, with longstanding interests in art and
architecture, Neil Rudenstine is the author of Sidney's Poetic Development,
the co-editor (with George S. Rousseau) of English Poetic Satire: Wyatt to
Byron, and the co-author (with William G. Bowen) of In Pursuit of the
PhD. A selection of his speeches and writings as president of Harvard is
soon to be published as Pointing Our Thoughts: Reflections on Harvard and
Higher Education 1991-2001. Educated at Princeton, Oxford, and Harvard,
from which he received his PhD in English, he was provost and professor of
English at Princeton University before serving as executive vice president
of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He has served as president of Harvard
University and professor of English and American literature and language
since 1991.
In addition to assisting in the oversight of the Mellon Foundation's
endowment as the Foundation's financial and administrative officer, James
Shulman has served in research and program-related positions at the Mellon
Foundation since 1994. He is the co-author (with William G. Bowen) of The
Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values, the author of The Pale
Cast of Thought: Hesitation and Decision in the Renaissance Epic, and a
collaborator on The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of
Considering Race in College and University Admissions (co-authored by
William G. Bowen and Derek Bok). Shulman received both his BA and his PhD
in Renaissance Studies from Yale University.
================================================================================
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Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH). The subjects of
announcements are not the projects of NINCH, unless otherwise noted;
neither does NINCH necessarily endorse the subjects of announcements. We
attempt to credit all re-distributed news and announcements and appreciate
reciprocal credit.
For questions, comments or requests to un-subscribe, contact the editor:
<<mailto:david@ninch.org>mailto:david@ninch.org>
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==============================================================
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 09:52:30 +0100
From: NINCH-ANNOUNCE <david@ninch.org>
Subject: "Digital Promise" project: $18 billion proposal
NINCH ANNOUNCEMENT
News on Networking Cultural Heritage Resources
from across the Community
April 10, 2001
Century Foundation Proposal for Digital Opportunity Investment Trust
$18 billion from spectrum auction
"An Electronic Land Grant" for the Information Age.
<http://www.digitalpromise.org/pressrelease1.asp>http://www.digitalpromise.org/pressrelease1.asp
[From Digital Promise website:]
For Immediate Release
Contact: Mike Collins
(202) 383-9700
GROUPS URGE A "DIGITAL GIFT" TO THE NATION
Report Calls for an Electronic Land-Grant Act for Our Time
WASHINGTON, D.C. - April 5, 2001 - A broad-based coalition of educators,
library, museum, science and arts officials, and leaders of top information
technology companies today urged the creation of a "Digital Gift" to the
nation that would fulfill the broad educational promise of the Internet and
other digital technologies. The recommendation was made in a new report, "A
Digital Gift to the Nation," a project of The Century Foundation that was
sponsored by five major foundations.
The report by Newton N. Minow and Lawrence K. Grossman likens the proposal
to the Land-Grant Colleges Act of 1862, which set aside public lands to
create a world-class system of 105 universities across the nation. The
proposal would create the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust (DO IT),
funded with $18 billion from the auction of the publicly owned
electromagnetic spectrum, today's equivalent of public land - "an
electronic land grant" for the Information Age.
"The Trust would serve as a venture capital fund for our nation's nonprofit
educational and public service institutions," the report said of the Trust,
which would be administered on the model of the National Science
Foundation. "It would be dedicated to innovation, experimentation, and
research in utilizing new telecommunications technologies across the widest
possible range of public purposes."
The Trust would spur the development of innovative educational prototypes
and models through the digital transformation of archives, training
materials, online courses, civic information, and quality arts and cultural
programs.
"The nooks and crannies of our libraries, museums and other non-profits
hold cultural and educational treasures, yet these treasures stay locked
tight," said Grossman, former president of NBC News and the Public
Broadcasting System (PBS). "A Digital Trust would find innovative ways to
unlock these treasures for every American. It will make the convergence of
the Internet, television and other telecommunications technologies better
than any of them individually."
Minow, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and PBS,
added: "The Trust would spur innovative uses of telecommunications and
information technology for education to make available the marvels of our
libraries, colleges and museums to every home, school and workplace. It is
time to dream big dreams about our digital future and the needs of our
knowledge-based economy."
Grossman said that the wiring of America is a monumental achievement. "Now
is the time to connect those wires to content worthy of the technology," he
added. "We have a window of opportunity to put our remarkable Internet,
wireless and information technologies to their highest and best use for
every American."
Among those endorsing the proposal are James H. Billington, Librarian of
Congress; Stanley Ikenberry, president of the American Council on
Education; Sheila P. Burke, undersecretary of the Smithsonian Institution;
Eamon M. Kelly, chair of the National Science Foundation; Henry Kelly,
president of the Federation of American Scientists; Dr. Robert N. Butler,
president of the International Longevity Center; Robert Lynch, president of
Americans for the Arts; and Martn Gmez, executive director of the
Brooklyn Public Library.
Executives of information technology companies also endorsed the report,
including Eric Schmidt, chairman of Novell; Meg Whitman, president and CEO
of eBay and Rob Glaser, chairman and CEO of RealNetworks.
The Digital Promise Project was supported by the Carnegie Corporation of
New York, The Century Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight
Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The Open
Society Institute. The report and 17 background papers are all available on
a new Web site, www.digitalpromise.org.
# # #
For the Report, see
<http://www.digitalpromise.org/report.asp>http://www.digitalpromise.org/report.asp
For more information about the project contact the Century Foundation at
212/535-4441 or <mailto:digitalpromise@tcf.org>.
==============================================================
NINCH-Announce is an announcement listserv, produced by the National
Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH). The subjects of
announcements are not the projects of NINCH, unless otherwise noted;
neither does NINCH necessarily endorse the subjects of announcements. We
attempt to credit all re-distributed news and announcements and appreciate
reciprocal credit.
For questions, comments or requests to un-subscribe, contact the editor:
<<mailto:david@ninch.org>mailto:david@ninch.org>
==============================================================
See and search back issues of NINCH-ANNOUNCE at
<<http://www.cni.org/Hforums/ninch-announce/>http://www.cni.org/Hforums/ninch-announce/>.
==============================================================
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